Archive for the ‘Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance’ tag

The Larger family from Westerville, Ohio, brought their very distinctive barrel-back woodie wagon to take part in the special Chrysler Town and Country class. Produced in late January 1942, just one month after the attack on Pearl Harbor, this particular Town and Country was one of the last civilian automobiles manufactured. It was built on a Windsor sedan chassis, and is one of 999 Town and Country models produced before the making of war materiel took over Detroit’s automobile factories. This particular six-passenger version, of which just 150 were produced in this body style, remains one of only two known to exist today. There are 15 more out there, but those are nine-passenger models.

This Town and Country wagon was originally used in making industrial training films back in the day, yet it had been very well cared for. Its odometer showed just 22,000 miles when the current owner purchased it back in 1966 in Cleveland. Today, all its wood paneling and framing are original to the car, and remain in very good condition.

With its very limited use of chrome plating (due to the war effort), which was reserved just for the bumpers, this remains the only known “blackout” Town and Country to have survived. The horizontal grille slats are nothing more than painted metal.

Editor’s note: This photo gallery comes to us from frequent Hemmings Daily contributor Chris Brewer. Chris is a contributor to the Florida Times Union newspaper, and serves as senior editor of Automotive Addicts.

On Saturday, March 14, the Automotive Addicts team joined the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance in hosting Cars & Coffee at the Concours, presented by Heacock Classic Car Insurance. The Cars & Coffee show runs the day before the annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance, and this year’s event featured almost 350 classic and exotic cars from local clubs, displayed on the 10th and 18th fairways of the Golf Club of Amelia Island.

Avantis greet the sunrise.

Cars & Coffee at the Concours allows individuals with clean vintage, exotic and collectible vehicles to gather on the same field used by cars entered in the concours d’elegance, without the need for historical significance, absolute originality, or perfection-level detailing. Showing a vehicle costs nothing, and the event is free to the public. Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance president Bill Warner views Cars & Coffee as a gift to the community, a tangible “thank you” for supporting the event and making the award-winning show, now in its 20th year, a reality.

Corvette club members on the green.

Special thanks go to Bill Warner, the Amelia Island Concours staff, and the hundreds of volunteers who worked together to produce one of the finest Cars & Coffee shows imaginable.

The many race cars that Stirling Moss drove in competition. Photos by the author.

No matter who you talk to, be they the cars’ owners or spectators, collectors or journalists, the Amelia Island Concours ranks among everyone’s favorite automotive events in the country. And we couldn’t agree more.

1960 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe.

This is truly a spectacular car show. It took founder Bill Warner two decades to make this once-regional concours into a world-class event, and he has succeeded beyond everyone’s—and we bet his own, too—wildest imagination.

Special display of 914/6 Porsches.

What makes the Amelia Island Concours so special, so unique, is the variety of cars that make up the huge show field. From ultra-rare one-off prototypes to cars that were once produced on a mass scale, to limited-production sports cars, Classic cars, historic race cars and finely crafted hot rods of distinction, the scope of this event will simply amaze you. Without question, this is one car show that you really must attend at least once in your lifetime.

1959 Lancia Flaminia Zagato.

In the gallery below, you’ll find a sampling of some of the very special cars that were on display in 2015. Look for more comprehensive coverage coming your way via the pages of our magazines.

Brook Stevens’s path to automotive design fame began with a 1930 Cord L-29, his own car, purchased with the assistance of his father, which he customized to resemble Speedster models from family brands Auburn and Duesenberg. Stevens so loved the Cord that he kept the car for more than 60 years, up until his death in 1995. On Sunday, his Cord L-29 Speedster, now owned by Ed Schoenthaler of Oak Brook, Illinois, took Best of Show, Concours d’Elegance, at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance.

Stevens’s love for the L-29 was said to go back to his teenage years, when he first encountered the front-wheel-drive Cord at a wedding. In 1932, his father would help the architecture student purchase a two-year-old Cord L-29 cabriolet, which Stevens soon began to modify, perhaps as a showcase for his design talents.

To give the L-29 a sleeker shape, the cowl was cut down, the body was narrowed and a V-shaped windshield with a pronounced rake was added. Behind the cabin, the rumble seat was replaced with smooth sheetmetal, and a vertical dorsal fin added. Sidemounts were removed and filled in, and front fenders were partially enclosed to enhance the car’s aerodynamic appearance. Hood louvers were replaced with mesh screening for better ventilation and enhanced cooling, low-profile “Woodlite” headlamps were added, and as a finishing touch, Stevens had the car finished in a two-tone livery and capped his creation with a radiator mascot of his own design.

As Stevens intended to run the car in hillclimbs and other motorsport events, performance was marginally enhanced as well. The car retained its Lycoming-built, 298.6-cu.in. inline eight-cylinder engine, but Stevens reportedly added an intake manifold with dual carburetors and a lower-restriction exhaust manifold to boost output above the stock 125 horsepower.

Stevens would go on to a lengthy career in both automotive and industrial design, with highlights that included the Jeep Wagoneer, the Studebaker Gran Turismo Hawk, the 1949 Harley-Davidson Hydra-Glide, the Oscar Meyer Weinermobile, the Miller Brewing logo and the Skytop Lounge railroad observation cars. Despite his later successes, he never parted ways with his beloved Cord, which remained part of his collection for the remainder of his life.

1932 Alfa Romeo 8C 2300 Zagato Spider.

Also taking top honors at Amelia Island, in the Concours de Sport category, was a 1932 Alfa Romeo 8c 2300 Zagato Spider, owned by David Sydorick of Beverly Hills, California. Look for detailed show coverage in upcoming issues of Hemmings Classic Car, Hemmings Motor News and Hemmings Sports and Exotic Car.

Though he had to put it on the backburner a few years ago, Jeff Lane never gave up on his Dymaxion replica project, and now that it’s finished, he plans to load a number of his friends in it and take it on a three-day, multi-state road trip to Florida.

“We just took it for a 40-mile trip today, and it’s kind of like driving a 20-foot-long forklift,” Lane said, referring to the front-wheel-drive, rear-steer configuration of the Dymaxion. “Though it’s really not all that bad now that we have a body on it—it’s really very quiet with the engine in the rear and doesn’t have as many vibrations as one would expect for a Thirties car.”

Lane, founder of the Lane Motor Museum and avowed fan of odd cars, began the replica project about nine years ago after his friend and Tatra enthusiast John Long suggested it. A year of research later, and Lane embarked on the project, deciding on a mix of elements from the three completed original Dymaxions: He’d take major body design from Dymaxion No. 1 and mount it to a chassis more like the one under Dymaxions No. 2 and No. 3.

He’d also make some significant upgrades from the original designs, substituting hydraulic brakes for the original cable brakes, and hydraulic steering for the original chain-and-cable setup, both in the name of safety. “There’s one documented case of the chain slipping from one of the originals, causing a crash,” Lane said. “And the original steering system required 35 turns lock to lock; this system requires only six.”

Otherwise, the replica hews pretty close to the originals. It uses the same complete 1933 Ford flathead drivetrain—though mounted backwards in the chassis—as the originals, as well as the same bare aluminum body. Lane even specified that it use non-opening windows and have no doors on the driver’s side, just like No. 1.

Once he had the design specs finalized, he had Pennsylvania chassis builders Bob Griffith and Chuck Savitske build from scratch the three-frame chassis, which they completed in the spring of 2008. Then in 2011, Lane shipped the bare chassis to the Czech Republic, where Mirko Hrazdira (the same craftsman who built Lane’s Leyat replicas) spent two years building the wood frame for the body. Once he finished building the body structure, Czech-based Tatra restorer ECORRA shaped and installed the aluminum body panels, wired the car, and installed the interior.

In the meantime, Lord Norman Foster of the United Kingdom commissioned Crosthwaite and Gardiner to build a replica of the long-lost Dymaxion No. 3, a deal that included the restoration of Dymaxion No. 2—the only original Dymaxion known to still exist—for the National Automobile Museum.

Lane’s completed, 3,400-pound replica arrived back at the Lane Motor Museum in early February, and Lane said it’s already been guaranteed a space in this year’s Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance as a special display car. To get his replica to Amelia Island, Lane said he intends to forego the trailer and drive the Dymaxion the entire distance—a roughly 600-mile trip through Tennessee, Georgia and Florida that would normally take about nine hours. To get there, he plans on leaving March 11.

Until then, the Dymaxion replica will be on display at the museum, starting February 26. For more information, visit LaneMotorMuseum.org.

The Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will take place March 12-15. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.

In 1980, Mercedes-Benz began to take its participation in World Rally Championship competition seriously, embarking on an ambitious project to turn the R107 platform 500 SL convertible into a dominant rally car. The experiment ended when Mercedes executives pulled funding prior to the start of the 1981 season, but not before four prototypes were built; next month, one of these rally-prepped SL convertibles will make an appearance at the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance.

Jochen Mass at Ascari in 2012.

Despite its evolution from sports car into grand-tourer, Mercedes-Benz enjoyed surprising World Rally Championship success in the late 1970s with its C107 platform SLC coupe. Running in select events, the team managed a podium finish at the 1979 East Africa Safari Rally, and then delivered a podium sweep at the Rallye Côte d’Ivoire, a race so grueling that no entrants completed the stages in 1972. For 1980, Mercedes went from the 450SLC to the 500SLC and ran more of the WRC schedule, delivering podiums in Argentina and New Zealand, along with a one-two finish at the Rallye Côte d’Ivoire. The effort was good enough to earn Mercedes-Benz fourth-place in the manufacturers standings.

Photo courtesy Mercedes-Benz Classic.

The head of Mercedes-Benz’s rally efforts, Erich Waxenberger, realized the potential of the team was hampered by its platform of choice. For the 1981 season, with 1980 world champion Walter Roehrl already signed as the team’s star driver, Waxenberger would create a new car based on the R107 SL platform. The big advantage would come in handling; with a wheelbase 14-inches shorter than the car it would replace, the R107 SL was perceived as far more nimble than the rally-built C107.

Photo courtesy Mercedes-Benz Classic.

Weight savings was deemed essential to the program as well, so an aluminum roll cage was used in place of a steel roll cage. Thinner metal stampings were used in floor sections not essential to body rigidity, and polycarbonate windows were used in place of glass (except for the windshield, which was considered an essential part of the body structure). Plastic seats for driver and co-driver shaved a few additional pounds, and when the team was done the weight savings totaled a remarkable 236 kilograms (519 pounds) over the 1980 500SLC Rally.

Photo courtesy Mercedes-Benz Classic.

Power came from the same 5.0-liter V-8 used in the 1980 car, which produced approximately 320 horsepower and shifted through a four-speed automatic transmission. The driver could select gears manually; and to enhance grip, the limited-slip rear differential would also offer up to 80-percent locking. The rally car’s 1:4.08 gearing made for quicker acceleration, but limited the car to a top speed around 135 MPH. To compensate for the nose-heavy platform, a vertical emergency brake lever in the passenger footwell allowed the driver to quickly rotate the rear of the car as needed.

Photo courtesy Mercedes-Benz Classic.

As Bernd S. Koehling explains in The Modern Mercedes SL: The R107 (1971-1989), Waxenberger was quite proud of the team’s testing accomplishments, and was called to present his plan for the 1981 season to the Mercedes-Benz board of directors. In advance of the meeting, perhaps filled with a bit too much confidence, the engineer had guaranteed that Mercedes-Benz would capture the World Rally Championship before 1986, the year that marked the 100th anniversary of the automobile. Driver Walter Roehrl had less confidence in the program, and when asked if the team could guarantee victory at the 1981 season-opening Monte Carlo Rally, Roehrl replied that he expected a top-five finish.

Erich Waxenberger with his creation at Ascari in 2102. Photo courtesy Mercedes-Benz Classic.

With the deck already stacked against him, Waxenberger presented his case for a two-car team to run the entire 1981 season, but after lengthy discussion, the board would only agree to fund a single-car effort. Waxenberger pushed back, saying it would be either a two-car team or nothing at all, at which time the board simply agreed to the latter. Mercedes-Benz officially discontinued its WRC program, and Roehrl, despite holding a 10-year contract with Mercedes-Benz, suddenly found himself unemployed (but not for long, as the German driver signed with the Eminence team to drive a Porsche 911 for the 1981 WRC season).

The four cars built did see competition in the hands of privateers, most with strong ties to Mercedes-Benz. The car to be shown at Amelia Island was raced by Scuderia Kassel, a team run by a German Mercedes-Benz dealership, during the 1982 and 1983 German Rally Championship seasons.

The 2015 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will take place on March 13-15. For additional details, visit AmeliaConcours.org.

1954 EMW 327/3, built by East Germany’s Eisenacher Motorenwerk. Photos by the author.

It may look like a prewar BMW 327, but it isn’t. It even sounds like a BMW 327, but it isn’t. And although it even shares many of the same body panels and other mechanical bits of a BMW 327, it is not a BMW 327.

It’s an EMW, built by Eisenacher Motorenwerk. More specifically, it’s a 1954 EMW 327/3.

Yes, you read that correctly, it was built in 1954, some nine years after World War II ended, and during the period when Germany was split in two. This EMW was built on the east side of the country, which was then known as East Germany.

And it’s the only known example residing in the United States.

A while back, I had the honor of photographing this stunning piece of automotive history. I traveled to Stuart, Florida, where this German gem is kept by its owners Rachelle and Henry Grady, to photograph it for an upcoming feature by Mark J. McCourt that will appear in the March 2015 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car magazine, along with the fascinating history on both this car and the company that built it.

It took Mark an extensive amount of research to unearth the facts behind the EMW company and its cars, but for now, we’ll tease you with these photos. The body of the car you see here was crafted in Dresden, Germany by VEB Karrosseriewerk, while final assembly of the EMW took place in Eisenach, Germany. This car is production number 144 of only 152 coupes made between 1954-’55.

You can read all about this fascinating, beautifully shaped and finely crafted automobile in the pages of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car #115, and you can start making plans to see it in the metal at the 2015 Amelia Island Concours, to be held on Sunday, March 15, where it will be part of the very special BMW 328 exhibit.

Conventional wisdom says that concours d’elegance events, especially those as well-respected as Amelia Island, are no place for the think-outside-the-box world of hot rods. Bill Warner, founder and chairman of the Amelia Island event, would beg to differ, and in 2015 created an “East versus West” hot rod class devoted exclusively to that American automotive art form.

The category will feature a total of 16 cars, including eight built on the West Coast and eight constructed on the East Coast. The centerpiece of the West Coast cars will be the Moal Coachworks Falcon, while the cornerstone of the East Coast contingent will be the long and low Posie Aeroliner Sport, a car that Warner sums up by saying, “If Jay Gatsby were a hot rodder, Posie’s Aeroliner Sport would be his car.” Even the hot rods immortalized by the U.S. Postal Service, including Bruce Meyer’s red 1932 Bob McGee Ford and Mark Graham’s Vern Tardel-built black highboy, will be on display.

Moal Falcon. Photo by Peter Vincent.

Though one could argue that the roots of hot rodding predate the Second World War, the explosion in popularity of the shadetree-built performance car followed the war’s end. Returning GIs, particularly those without family obligations, found little of interest on new-car dealer lots. Instead, many turned to the same improvisational skills that had gotten them through the war, relying on trial and error to improve the performance of cars on hand.

Though East Coast and West Coast styles evolved simultaneously, Warner is quick to point out their differences. “The East Coast Rod is a blood relation of the sports car, while the West Coast Rod has the style of the dry lakes roadster, of Bonneville and the whole Ford ‘flathead’ V-8 scene; probably what most people envision when they hear the words ‘Hot Rod.’” Blame it on Hollywood, then, since the West Coast style has long been celebrated in movies and on television, while the East Coast style hasn’t gotten much exposure.

Photo courtesy USPS.

Warner likens the hot rod to a “rogue animal,” comparing builders like Posies and Moal to the Carrozzerias of Italy or the coachbuilders of England. In fact, Warner says, modern builders take things a step further than their European counterparts, declaring, “While the Carrozzeria designs and creates a body for an existing platform, the current American hot rodder usually makes the whole car from the wheels up. Sometimes they even make the wheels.”

The 2015 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will take place on March 13-15 at The Golf Club of Amelia Island at The Ritz-Carlton. For additional information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.

Among the other automotive anniversaries that will be marked in 2015 is the 60th anniversary of Sir Stirling Moss’ towering, record-shattering victory for Mercedes-Benz in the 1955 running of the Mille Miglia, in partnership with the late motoring journalist Denis Jenkinson. That has prompted the organizers of the Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance to reprise their inaugural event by bringing Sir Stirling back next year as honoree during the event’s 20th anniversary, scheduled to take place next March 13-15.

Moss and Jenkinson behind the wheel of the Mercedes W196 300SLR at the 1955 Mille Miglia.

Sir Stirling is widely known as not just a British knight of the realm but also as a patriot, who preferred to run cars from his homeland in Grand Prix racing. His honor as a sporting gentleman was cemented forever in 1958, when he publicly lobbied for Mike Hawthorn to avoid a minor penalty, thereby assuring that Hawthorn won the World Driving Championship that year despite Hawthorn’s single win as opposed to Sir Stirling’s four. The former equestrian star is thus considered the greatest, most heroic driver to have never won a Formula 1 championship.

A young Stirling Moss poses with the OSCA he drove to victory at Sebring in 1954.

He did battle with Fangio, Collins, Hawthorn, Hill and other greats before a harrowing accident at Goodwood in 1962 that largely ended his Grand Prix career. Since then, Sir Stirling has been a beloved ambassador of the sport; a survivor of its most deadly era. One of the world’s truly great car events, Amelia Island takes place in northeast Florida at the famed namesake Ritz-Carlton resort, typically drawing more than 300 premium road and race cars. In 2015, that lineup will include a 20-car class of cars that Sir Stirling personally raced. For more information, visit AmeliaConcours.org.

For years, the Porsche 914 was the Rodney Dangerfield of the Zuffenhausen product line: among Porsche purists, it simply couldn’t get any respect, despite its success on the racetrack. Perhaps it was the car’s diminutive size, or its relatively modest power output in four-cylinder form, or its ties to Volkswagen, but the 914 was rarely spoken of in the same sentence as the venerable 911. That attitude has been steadily changing as the years tick by, and as further proof of the 914′s significance to automotive history, it will be honored at the 20th annual Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance.

Though today Porsche shuns the idea of an entry-level model, in the late 1960s the German sports car brand was in search of every customer it could attract. Initially, the automaker’s solution was the Porsche 912, a four-cylinder version of the Porsche 911 that offered acceptable performance and superlative handling at a price attainable by a broader audience. To replace the 912 in the product lineup, Porsche turned to development partner Volkswagen, and together they laid the groundwork for a compact, lightweight, mid-engine sports car.

The Duval Bailey Porsche 914/6 at the 1971 Daytona 24 Hours.

Initially, both Porsche and Volkswagen were to get a version of the final product, with Porsche’s variant powered by an air-cooled flat-six and VW’s model powered by an air-cooled flat-four. Porsche soon realized that such a move would, perhaps, take its brand a bit too far down market, and successfully lobbied Volkswagen to give it exclusive rights to both four and six-cylinder models.

When Volkswagen’s chairman, Heinz Nordhof, died shortly after the first 914 prototype was delivered to Porsche, things got complicated. Nordhof’s replacement, Kurt Lotz, refused to honor an informal agreement between the two automakers that precluded Porsche from paying tooling costs, and hence the cost of each 914 chassis delivered to Stuttgart rose significantly. While the four-cylinder 914 was still (marginally) cost effective, the six-cylinder 914/6 was priced nearly as high as the entry-level 911, thus limiting the car’s appeal. A later variant, the 916, would have offered both six-cylinder power and aggressive wide-body styling with flared fenders, but the car was deemed too expensive for production and the project was cancelled after just 11 prototypes were built.

The ex-Peter Gregg 916, one of just 11 examples built.

Despite the increased cost for all version, the base 914 proved to be a popular model for Porsche, with sales likely spurred on by the car’s racing successes. As Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance founder Bill Warner recalls, “…the Porsche 914 found a home and willing customers through the racing exploits of Peter Gregg, Hurley Haywood and Brumos Porsche, who took the 914/6 GT to victory in the first IMSA GT race in history on the way to winning the first IMSA GT Championship title in 1971.”

Legendary 911 racer Hurley Haywood remembers the 914/6 GT as, “…my first real race car. Peter Gregg and I shared the championship in 1971 in my first year of professional racing. The 914 was really fun to drive and we would kill the big-block Chevys and Fords in IMSA.”

The Porsche 914 captured victory in half the races on the 1971 IMSA GT schedule, but its sweetest victory may have come at Le Mans in 1970; not only did a 914/6 capture a GT class victory, but it finished the race three laps ahead of the best-finishing Porsche 911.

The 2015 Amelia Island Concours d’Elegance will take place on March 13-15, 2015. For additional details, visit AmeliaConcours.org.